Lucky in Oz

Wishlist Time Capsule

I was perusing my Amazon wishlist ... come to realize that I have stuff on there from literally YEARS ago, such as:

• "The Lobster Kids' Guide to Exploring Seattle" by Shelley Arenas

• "Where Is Baby's Belly Button?" by Karen Katz

• "More More More, Said the Baby" by Vera B. Williams

... also, a bunch of CDs for the preschool set, including a Barney compilation. Kid was a HUGE Barney fan. If you'd have told me 8 years ago that I was going to get pregnant and give birth to a future Barney Fan Club president I'd have crossed my legs against the eventuality. But once I put my bias aside and realized that Barney is all about make believe ... and could keep said baby happy and entertained for multiple 30-minute episodes, I embraced the big purple lug.

Who knew that getting online to buy "Value Stream Mapping for the Office" would turn out to be so sentimental!

Holiday Card Retrospective

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Every year we say basically the same thing: "Wishing You Peace & Joy in 200X" - so it is essentially a New Year's Card, buying us an extra week to get them out the door ... and we still send some late. Last year we said it in French, ooh la la. (We missed out on getting our photos taken by Tara so we used vacation photos instead.) This year is the first I have not used Shutterfly. I could have - they do ship here for not too much $$. But VistaPrint can do it locally and it is cheaper. This time they are simple post cards (thus, cheaper to mail back to the states) with our new address on the other side - two birds, one stone and all. We got a tree today (more on that later ... all I'll say now is that we cannot find the stand [did we even bring it?] so it is outside in a bucket - festive!). So, I guess the season is upon us ... though it does feel odd for it to be still light at nearly 9:00 P.M. while I order my holiday cards.

Photo from the Archives - 7/02

As long as we're wandering around the "July 2002" block of Memory Lane:

We've always said that she got her sleeping-at-night ability from me and her napping talent from him. This must have been the first tutorial. We're big believers in experiental learning.

Story from the Archives - Birth!

In my prior post about Kid's birthday I promised to scan and post the birth story that our doula wrote for us (which I still intend to do … at some point). Well, this is even better – and amazing! I was just browsing through some CDs in a box of random photo, data and back-up CDs and I found the birth story that I wrote for my yoga class. (I did pre-natal yoga at the Seattle Holistic Center with the famous – in gestational circles at least – Collette Crawford. Part of the gig was that we each got a partner (someone with a due date a couple months later); after baby was born, we each relayed our story to our partner and she read it to the class.) The amazing this is that I apparently wrote it exactly five years ago today! So, without further ado, read on if you're interested in such things.

Download Birth-Story.doc

(Keep in mind this was written by a very recently pregnant woman for an audience of – literally – naval-gazing pregnant women … in Seattle … in a very groovy yoga class. Thus, it is quite, um, detailed – it mentions all your standard labor gunk and parts, plus there is moaning and chakra-balancing chanting ... so proceed only if you're a certifiable birth junkie.)

A Whole Hand!

Kid turned five on Monday. FIVE! A whole hand! Something that has surprised me about being a parent is the impact my kid's birthday has on me – not the stress of last minute Oriental Trading Company orders for rainbow goody bags, tattoos, pencils, and, well, everything ... (note: if you want to order any rainbow-ish items from this party Mecca, you'll have to wait for them to restock since I cleaned 'em out) – but the emotional, sentimental, "five years ago RIGHT NOW ____________" (I was making a belly cast with Susy. I was at the lake with Jill and Susy. I was walking Seward Park not knowing that in six hours my water would break. I was going to bed not knowing that in three hours my water would break. I was waking up because my water broke! We were at the hospital and I was officially in labor. We were at the hospital and I was in the tub. We were at the hospital and I was walking. We were at the hospital and I was in the tub, again. We were at the hospital and I was walking, again. And on and on and on and on ... Until! We were calling Nona to tell her "it's a girl!" and she didn't believe us.) Seriously, the week-long build-up to Kid's birthday every year takes us right back down memory lane and I get all weepy and clingy (with Kid – I'm like a barnacle whenever she's around, I just attach myself to her). This year we went out to dinner at "the Mexican place in C'umbia City where they bring a lollipop with the check" per her request then afterwards we went for dessert on Capitol Hill, passing Swedish Hospital on the way – fuel for the nostalgia fire: "There it is! There's the window of the room we were in! There's the little patio where I threw up!" (Guy admitted he has no memory of me throwing up. My 20-hour labor was so hard on him. All that walking!) Anyway, by the time Kid is in middle school she's have such a thorough command of each and every detail leading up to her birth she'll be able to write her own birth story. In the meantime, I'm going to try to scan the one our doula wrote for us to post here. Stay tuned. Other coming attractions, rainbow party pictures and first two-wheeler pictures (a.k.a. who says a tutu is not appropriate biking garb?!).

Drawing from the Archives - 2/07

What is most astonishing about this picture - to me - is how different it is from the people she draws now. A mere five months and now her people have necks, bodies, hair, ears ... and often little embellishments like jewelry and tutus. I'll try to find a stereotypical example of a recent drawing to post too.

Photo from the Archives - 11/02

I was cleaning my desk (I think we used to have custodial staff that did this ... but now, every couple weeks, I am driven to wiping down my work surface with a baby wipe it gets so gross ... ) and I brushed against the side of my laptop in its docking station, hitting the CD drawer button. And, out popped a CD! I have no idea how long it’s been in there and didn't know what was on it so I opened it up to find

and dozens more baby pictures - and little movies, too.

Turned in her Kindergarten enrollment form yesterday. HOW DID THAT HAPPEN? 0-5 in what sometimes feels like a nanosecond (ok, sometimes it feels like an eon ... such as when school is out and she just asked me for the BILLIONTH time if she can have a movie. But let's keep with the waxing sentimental for a moment now, shall we?) Here is another:

There are some v cute bath pictures ... but I don't want to get fired for posting p*rn at work.

Soundbite from the Archives

Old MacDonald, at two-and-a-half-years-old. Download OldMacDonaldDec2004.wav

Photo from the Archives - 10/03

Kid was 18 months. Cute, eh? Looks like one of those drive-east-for-an-hour rural pumpkin patches, doesn't it? DOESN'T IT?! Ha! Fooled ya! It is the seasonal pumpkin display in the parking out front of our local QFC. That's right. The hay? All "imported" to the very NOT rural Rainier Valley, 98144. I was loading Kid and groceries into the car and happened to have the camera in the glove box and ... you see the rest. Clever mommy, eh?

Photo from the Archives - 3/05

It is coming up on the one-year anniversary of Chance dying, so I've been thinking a lot about her. She was an excellent cat. And god! Look at how cute and soft and furry she was! Julia just posted about her cat. The beloved cat is dying and she wanted some advice about how to tell her son. I posted comments about how we dealt with it with Kid.

I see that a lot of people have left helpful comments already, but I’ll tell you my story too. (Maybe I need the catharsis, still, 10 months later. Man, I loved that cat!) Our cat got sick when our daughter was about 3. The cat – who had a rare fungal infection – had to be hospitalized a few times. So, we had months to prepare Z, “Chance is very sick and she might die … When cats are very old and very sick sometimes they die.” etc. But, of course, she didn't totally “get” what “die” meant. When the vet called the morning that Chance did actually die (she had been hospitalized) we were shocked but not surprised, if that makes sense. My husband was adamant about going and getting her body so we could bring it home and bury her. I was ambivalent and not just a little squeamish about it. But in respect, I am so glad we did it. We brought Chance home in a cardboard box, wrapped in a towel. We spent some time looking at her and petting her. Z definitely “got” what “dead” meant. My husband and Z dug a hole in the backyard next to the house where Chance had napped. We buried the cat, wrapped in the towel, and we stood and said goodbye to her. Z really handled it well – she was very curious of course and asked a lot of questions. We’ve tried to answer all her questions honestly. It has made me realize how hard it is to not have what I think of as “religious mythology” to fall back on. We’re not religious – we don’t believe in heaven – so, dead is dead. Bodies “disappear” after they have been in the ground for a long time – fur and skin and everything. Dead things eventually break down into soil, just like in the compost bin, and new things can grow … circle of life, as someone said above. We never mentioned “sleeping” or that Chance is anywhere else or that she could see us or hear us. Just the facts. It is hard to grow up with notions like heaven and afterlife – vague as they were in my “church only when dad is ushering and on holidays” Episcopal family – and language like “went to sleep” and “in a better place” and realize that if I am not going to pass on that legacy I’d better decide what story I am going to tell. But I think that now Z has a clear idea now of what “dead” is and understands the finality and it seems, to me, to be such a healthier attitude. Z was sort of death obsessed for a while. And, she still talks about Chance – for a long time she talked about her daily. (But now we have a puppy, so she has moved on.) So, my advice regarding preparing Patrick is to take some time to think about how you’re going to handle it – what you believe, what language you’ll use, what mythology you’ll pass on or not. (I hope I am not offending anyone who does use the prevailing religious language – it is just not for us.) If you use any books or DVDs, make sure they jibe with your message / mythology. It is sad and hard, but I was certainly harder for us than for Z. She actually says that she doesn’t miss Chance because she still loves her and she remembers her. (And again, we got a puppy ...)

So, there you have it - my lame advice about telling a preschooler about death. "Tell the truth." Well, duh. The hard thing, seriously, is deciding what you believe the truth to be and then resisting every culturally ingrained impulse to sugar-coat it or make stuff up about kitty heaven.

But if there is a kitty heaven? Chance is there, interrupting her nap only to gorge herself on the all-you-can-eat kibble buffet. Purr in peace, Chance.